LArt Magazine: A Feeling to Die For – a note on the muse
Sex, drugs, and, well, rock and roll wasn’t yet invented when Lizzie Siddal took her place as a Pre-Raphaelite muse. But if there were a Sid and Nancy in Victorian London, it was Lizzie and her rebel painter/poet paramour Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Now, Rossetti didn’t discover her, but he made Lizzie the first supermodel.
Lizzie was far from an ideal beauty when she surfaced. We may marvel at her flaming copper mane, translucent skin, and runway-ready body in Rossetti’s Beata Beatrix or John Everett Millais’s Ophelia. But back then, petite curves were in and red heads were to be ridiculed. But Lizzie transcended. She became the poster child for a revolution in aesthetics and female beauty.
Maybe this is why she suffered the pain and tragedy of her relationship with Rossetti. The two had a stormy relationship that lasted beyond her death. He never stopped painting her; she gave her life to being his muse.
Living in sin and being an art model, she was barely a rung above “whore” and lost any chance at respectable employment. Rossetti promised to marry her for more than a decade and only sealed the deal when she lay dying. Rossetti, who was never faithful. Rossetti, who seldom had a farthing to shine. Even when she left him, she was always his. (And he always came after her.) Her archives show how she suffered, lessening the pain with opiates that killed her in the end.
Sometimes it’s a mystery why women endure humiliation, neglect, broken promises, and a masquerade of love. As a bit of a Lizzie buff, I’m convinced that one reason she stayed is because he made her feel beautiful.
As an art model, I know the power of the artist/muse connection. I remember my first class. For six weeks, I watched a group of sculptors struggle with my form. You’ve never seen such wild disproportions. (It was a beginner’s class, mostly men.) The instructor was different. I loved watching her work.
When she finished, I remarked on the elegant white clay torso, which I hadn’t recognized as my own until she replied, “It’s you.” I had seen my body objectively, and it was beautiful. When I went home that night, I spent far too long vogueing in my bathroom mirror, savoring the strange elation of seeing myself as a work of art.
Size 10 or size 2, I’ve done it all over the years. My curves used to plague me in Los Angeles, a city of rife with size zero women who are never satisfied with their form. After that class, I felt free. I modeled regularly for about six years. When the thrill of “Self as Art” in a student environment began to wane, I worked individually with a handful of truly gifted artists. This connection, to put it mildly, was addictive. It’s the stuff of the erotic charge, of power, of pride, of creation. It’s the joy of the muse. In these transcendental moments, where artist and muse tango in the ether, I have no question as to why Lizzie stayed.